Arthur Brown is simultaneously talking about his stage act and trying to construct a Good Sentence: Good Sentences have always featured largely in his interviews.
"The experience we give is alienation in its modern context of the human mind being removed from its true central joining point with the emanations of the divine spirit by entrapment in its own creations of systematic self-deception."
I'm not too sure whether it has any connection with the above Good Sentence, but Arthur has some amazing ideas for linking up someone to an electro-encephalograph and then relaying his brain impulses to the music onto the light machine, and also into the VCS3 so the brain could literally play its own musical reaction to Kingdom Come's music.
You wonder why he didn't take a lecturer's job on leaving university instead of wasting his verbal talents on the music business.
But at the moment, Arthur appears to have stopped wasting his talents, or at least hiding them under a bushel. After what must have been one of the most heartbreakingly misguided careers in the business, Arthur has just vindicated himself with an incredible album - "Galactic Zoo Dossier".
But for those who don't remember the beginning...
About three years ago the Crazy World of Arthur Brown became the biggest thing since Levis. They were Arthur, Vincent Crane (now leader of Atomic Rooster) and Carl Palmer (now of ELP). Drachan Theaker was also drummer for a time.
Arthur had invented this amazing stage act which consisted of him setting his helmet on fire and dancing like a dervish around the stage. This coupled with some very exciting music and an incredible voice seemed an unbeatable formula which got them a hit single and album. The single was "Fire". Then nothing.
Vincent had a nervous breakdown in the States, there were troubles of every description, and the band broke up. Due to contractual difficulties, Arthur made no more records. There were a couple of abortive attempts at bands but for the most part he was "getting it together" in Somerset.
Then a year ago he arrived in London with a band called Kingdom Come. They were greeted with suspicion and slight scorn. They were very broke and rehearsed in a basement in Covent Garden and staggered off on to the road. Practically the whole personnel changed, but they kept going, and reviews started to creep in about this 'frightening, evil' stage act.
There were crucifixes on stage, the band wore costumes, and there was the odd explosion. Then to crown things, out came the album, and, although still financially extremely insecure, the seven-piece Kingdom Come seem to be very much over the hump.
Arthur realises now that his main mistake was in giving up the theatrical side of his act.
"The act we do now is an extension of the old Hellfire thing. I gave that up and went into a straight musical bit, but then I realised as far as I was concerned, it wasn't the right way to express these things, so gradually over the past year we've got together this stage act."
Now the act is a combination of lights, costumes, exaggerated mime and music - a marvellous vehicle for getting everything across to the audience. It has been called frightening and ugly - especially the use of crucifixes.
"The feeling that comes across isn't evil so much as sheer energy," says Arthur. And this has always been true of anything he does onstage; he has a capacity for radiating this incredible energy. "As far as we're concerned, the theatrics puts you in the frame of mind where you're more ready to receive something; more receptive."
Although the album can only put over one facet of their stage performance, it still retains this energetic quality of Arthur's. All the tracks are things they do onstage - "that's the way we're always going to work because you iron out so many of the unnecessary difficulties; you've done the number a lot, you know the best way to do the numbers."
As usual Arthur is brim full of ideas. He says the next stage act will be completely different.
Despite the inevitable singling out of Arthur, because of name, fame and being the vocalist, Arthur insists that it's very much a corporate effort and the album hears him out; it's a far cry from Arthur Brown and backing band. If they can keep together through these leaner times they should be big, very big.
Now this is something I've been looking forward to since Kingdom Come recorded a remarkable session for "Top Gear". Arthur Brown is too strong a personality to remain dormant and the sound of his high notes send me, even now, hurtling back to Arabian nights at UFO. But this is contemporary music at its best and this single is a joy.
Kingdom Come are one of only a handful of groups who use a synthesiser constructively. I believe theirs is a VCS3 rather than the Moog, and, for what it's worth, I like the noises from the former better than those from the latter. Perhaps it's just that the groups that use the VCS3 use it more wisely, I don't know.
This is one hell of a good band and their music has a natural energy and drive which is all too rare in these days of carefully choreographed ecstasy. To confine these powers within a single is difficult but this one works well. Normally I return all review singles to "Disc" but they'll hunt in vain for this one.
Climatic, orgasmic, spectral, dramatic, indispensable stuff which could only end with an explosion. The "B" side is just bizarre - I look forward to the advertised LP. Get out there and buy this single as a taster. It's good to have you back, Arthur, and welcome Kingdom Come.
After two years on the road and a lot of personnel and musical changes, Kingdom Come are a band to watch this year. They have a new single "Spirit Of Joy", to help them on their way, and an album scheduled for late spring.
Their music and stage act has mellowed considerably from the old days when Arthur Brown, late of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, first decided to get another band together.
The line-up is now Brown, Victor Peralno (keyboards), Phil Shutt (bass) and Andy Dalby (guitar) and they're moving away from the old musical and theatrical images into ideas that form a much more cohesive experience.
The music is almost complete, and so is the stage act; all that's needed now are the finishing touches - and those if they fulfil the ideas that Arthur Brown is talking about will provide a show not to be missed on any account.
The first finishing touch is the addition of Bentley, the band's most recently acquired fifth member.
"I've had four good drummers in Kingdom Come," Brown explains. "And I've worked with many more good drummers in the bands I've had since I started. I know, in other words, what a good drummer is - and I also know most drummers can't handle what our music needs.
"Sometimes we might want them to work very, very simply... and the next moment we'll need them to do something very complex. None of the drummers I've worked with have been able to take it."
Hence Bentley - in actual fact a Bentley Rhythm Ace drum machine which Brown plays on stage. The band bought it when Chris Burrows, the last drummer, left.
"We realised it has a place of its own in rock music," Brown says. "There's one thing, you see, that limits all rock bands, and that is the fact that a rock band is built around a drum kit.
"The drum kit is limited by what the hands and feet of the drummer can do, and also by the problem of amplifying the kit to the electronic level of the band.
"The Rhythm Ace, in that sense, is equivalent to 200 ordinary drum kits. It frees the whole scope of rhythm and lets you get into patterns of rhythm that you just can't get with a drum kit. On mine, for example, you can have a drum kit and a Latin-American section at the same time - and there is no way you could do that otherwise."
The Rhythm Ace itself is a four-stage rhythm generator. The first stage contains the "operations system" which generates, through a system of oscillators, any conceivable permutation of rhythmic pulses.
The second stage is a rhythm selection unit which selects pulses from the operations system to provide rhythmic patterns ranging from straight rock to jazz and Latin-American tempos over a wide range of possible variations.
The third stage provides the "voices" in much the same way as the voice tabs of an electronic organ - except that the voices of the drum machine are drum voices. The final stage is a pre-amplifier with an output to an external power-amp system.
"The Rhythm Ace gives you any rhythm that a drummer can play," Brown explains, "as well as rhythmic combinations that can't be played on anything but the machine.
"It's also something that you can play the same day you buy it, as long as you've got a feel for rhythm. That's the only important thing - unless you develop a feel for music, you won't be able to get as much out of it."
Brown is careful to emphasise that the Rhythm Ace is not so much a substitute for a drummer and kit, as much as a new direction for the rhythmic basis of rock music. "The sounds it produces are like drum sounds," he says. "But they're not the same as drum sounds. They're percussion rather than drumming."
The addition of Bentley to Kingdom Come's music is one of the first stages in Arthur Brown's practical realisation of his musical and creative ideas - ideas which will include, in the near future, a quadraphonic sound system for the band, and the development of a new basis for their music.
This latter basis will focus on the use of geometrical shapes instead of scales - and it's something Brown sees lying ahead for music as a whole.
"There's definitely a new era of music coming," he says. And, knowing Arthur Brown, he could be absolutely right.
The audience were getting just a teeny bit restive. You could tell by the way they were throwing pellets of blotting paper at each other, kicking the one sitting in front of them and pulling their neighbour's hair.
Not quite the kind of behaviour one would expect at the Rainbow but then, when you get an audience with an average age of eight, you can't rate their coolness quite as stringently as you might otherwise.
After all, how many rock concerts have there been at Hounslow Heath Junior School?
To be absolutely precise, one. This one.
And logically enough, the band to make this full-frontal assault on the weenyboppers in their innermost lair would have to be the Sultans of Shock, the Overlords of Outrage, the Ultimate in Unpredictability, Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come. Who else f'Chrissake?
What happened was that parents in the Hounslow area received a little memeographed sheet along with the jumble sales notices informing them that a "talented group of young musicians will be presenting a programme of music and mime" and would they each contribute 10p towards the cost of the concert.
At the head of this motley band of mutants was the one-time pop star Arthur Brown, the only man ever to get into Germany without a passport.
Apart from Arthur, the longest-standing member of the band is guitarist Andy Dalby. This peculiar little creature used to wear a clown costume that made him look amazingly sinister, but now he restricts himself to black loons and T-shirt. He plays a very old left-handed Gibson, and plays magnificently.
Bassist is Phil Shutt, who is superficially the most straightforward member of the band. DO NOT BE FOOLED. He is as dangerous as the rest of them, but due to his amazing talent for inducing paranoia, I'll say no more.
Most mysterious member of the band is Vic Troiano, who manipulates keyboard instruments and strange noise-makers. He is officially from Whitby, Yorkshire, despite his strong Detroit accent, but none of that matters as he's from another planet anyway, the first astral rocker.
Fifth member of the band is Ace Bentley. No one has ever seen him. He sounds like drums, and is concealed in a small box on which Arthur presses buttons. I don't really understand Ace, as he is never available for interviews, but then neither is David Bowie.
So, in the school hall, the five-note tape loop has been revolving through the mammoth speakers for God knows how long, and then finally, something happens. The lights dim, four bizarre figures slide silently on to the stage and weird lights play over them. And then, as the lights blazed off the gold faces, and the first electronic drum beat pulsed over the hall, the ritual began.
Guitar and bass riffs poured off each other and unsettling regular and inhuman drumming and there was a faint electronic mist surrounding the whole. It begins with "Time Captain", which boogies, yes it do, and then "Electricity", with chanting by Andy and Arthur which is, it must be admitted, faintly eerie.
The kids loved it, much better than a panto it was, just a little bit scary, and real fun, not to mention musically fine.
Arthur screamed, sang, lectured, read stories and at one point brought one of the kids up to sing. She was scared brainless, but she sang "Mother Of Mine" very well, with surprising phrasing.
She then announced her name as 'Sharon Cotterill' and ran back to her place amid mass cheering. Come see me in six years time, Sharon, and I'll make you a star.
In many ways, the most impressive part of K. Come's set is when Arthur abandons his drum machine to come out in front in his red long johns and dance. I don't think I've seen anybody front a rock band as well as he does.
Frantically exhorting his audiences to own their minds and do their own thinking (even if they are ten years old) and moving with the joy of someone who's healthy and loves it (cough), he does indeed represent the free, unmessed-with aspect of humanity incarnate.
And the kids dug it, understood it absolutely, reacted to it with total honesty and immediacy. Not being accustomed to the ritual of rock shows, they reacted to it purely as spectacle, without mumbling, "Wot, No drummer?" or "Why doesn't he do 'Fire'?" as some of their supposedly more sophisticated elders do.
I will attempt no further description of K. Come's set as it is the hardest thing to describe accurately this side of Marc Bolan's guitar technique. All I can do is recommend that you see them as fast as is humanly possible.
If they're on form they'll blow your head off, if they're not, they'll still be worth the price of admission.
This one? Oh yes, there was a nappy ending.
The chillun adored it, yelled vociferously for more and demanded that Arthur and the lads be rebooked - unless the school double-bills Hawkwind and Alice Cooper.
by Steve Peacock
Lock up your daughters, the weirdos are back.
"I'd like you to meet Ace Bentley, our new drummer," said Arthur Brown. Ace sat immobile between Arthur's knees. Slick and black, he says nothing, but he's a neat little fellow: he'll slip from a tango to a slow rock beat in a split second, keeps perfect time throughout and never has volume problems.
A Rhythm Ace drumming machine may not be the most soulful of instruments, but in the context of Kingdom Come's latest mutation it seems to fit perfectly well. "We got rid of our last drummer through mutual admiration," says Arthur.
Since I last saw them, at the Rainbow with Alice Cooper, they've been through two stage acts. Changeable people: "The last one was much more balanced in terms of the situations it had, with a lot more humour in it. This one we're doing now is a lot more simple. Actually, not having a drummer has pushed the music forward a long way."
Though it isn't exactly a matter of compensating for the lack of a live drummer, Andy Dalby explains: "The thing at the moment is that we've all got something to do - we've all got a job to do when we're playing, whereas before there was always someone who didn't actually need to be doing anything, but who did it anyway."
Arthur: "It's just a completely different music. It's not like having an electronic drummer, it's just like having a different percussion instrument and in order to use that concept the music obviously changes. For one thing, with Ace you can go in a tenth of a second from a rock beat through a tango to something else, adding claves and everything. There's so much more you can get into than with a drummer."
Andy: "You can't really compare them. It's like having a metronome instead of a drummer - we're not trying to make it sound like a drummer. We can get a better sound whenever we're on stage too - it's much better because everything's much quieter and you can actually hear what's going on. You don't have that acoustic problem of having to play as loud as the drums to get over before you start playing the music. It's a bit like being in a studio - you can control it."
Last time I say them, their stage act was pretty flamboyant too - complete with crucifixion and strange creatures like The Brain. "There's a lot more concentration now," says Arthur. "A lot less movement in certain parts and we're letting the lighting and the music speak for itself a lot more, rather than centring the stage act around characters doing things on stage. Rather than having a big personality thing, it's moved more into just the quality of the music and the lights, letting that do to the audience what in the old style we might have tried to do ourselves.
"We've also been making certain investigations into the relationships between colour and sound, from the point of view of scientific research. We hope to work that out so that we'll be able to produce predictable effects."
The new act contains very little music from Kingdom Come's new album, just released. That was the last act and Arthur says that "compared to what we were doing with that act, there seems to have been a breakthrough in communication with the audience". However, ask him how he feels about the album and he'll tell you it's "probably representative of a passing phase in English music: I should say it was probably the end of an era."
The interview dissolved into some kind of garbage collection's paradise about Percy Throwup - you don't half see the seamier side of the rock business in this job - so I turned the tape off. Arthur was horrified and turned it on again.
"We feel music today is moving more and more into the electronic field, therefore we're experimenting more and more with this area of sound expression, because a single note, if placed in the right way, can have as much effect as an hour of rock and roll, which is why classical music is often so tasteful and why Chuck Berry and Fats Domino have it over most of the modern rock groups, because they're tasteful and they space it out more, whereas most modern rock groups play 300 notes to the bar and they don't really know what they're playing and they haven't the maturity of ideas or the direction.
"That was a long sentence wasn't it? Let's see... the positional facility of electronic computerised advances in our western society today have evidence throughout the western world especially in Japan and Germany and can be seen to be evincing certain effects on the music of today, colon, and they...."
Such diverse elements as Mr. Brain (a small and lumpy grey matter severely dented by the education system), a boat, a human telephone, the Pope, traffic lights, a giant test tube, backdrops and the gauze screen, all contribute to Kingdom Come's weird and wonderful stage show.
The show at the Rainbow on Friday seemed to be structured as a series of surrealistic sensations rather than any kind of unified story or message, and with the group's gold facial make-up it's a bit like a cross between Dr. Who and Dr. No.
As always, with any group Arthur Brown's been involved in, a performance is not so much a concert as a constant barrage of music, ideas and visuals. At the moment, the music seems to be losing out a little. After some inspired moments early on, there was an awful lot of numbers that just sounded like another heavy metal cliché, while Arthur did amazing things with his voice and legs in front.
He remains one of the most perfect pieces of human mixed media in existence. His voice, with its huge range, is as powerful as ever and his strange style of movements make sure that Kingdom Come don't need a Stacia for their silver machine.
But I found their music rather too machine-like, and it was a relief when a real drummer was included in addition to the drum machine for the encore. "Triangles", "Soothing music to send you off to sleep." Arthur called it, but it didn't stay that way for long. If Kingdom Come were a little less predictable musically and a little more predictable visually, I think there would have been more satisfaction and less puzzlement on my part. The audience seemed happy enough though, especially after Arthur had slid down the front of the stage to boogie enthusiastically with a Kingdom Comer in the aisle.